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Kotomi Ichinose
|voiceactor_en = Emily Neves |references = , Character. , 2006. Retrieved .Year of birth calculated based on a visual novel screenshot }} Kotomi Ichinose is another schoolmate of Tomoya Okazaki in the same year, but, like Kyou, is in a separate class from Tomoya. She is in the top ten for every subject throughout the whole country in standardized exam results. She always goes to the library to read extra materials, especially books in foreign languages. Kotomi is a very quiet girl and it is quite difficult to communicate with her, as she is extremely shy. In her spare time, she plays the violin, although she is very poor at it to the point of causing pain to those who hear her play as a comedic effect. Kotomi's theme is Étude Pour les Petites Supercordes. Kotomi prefers to be addressed using the , as "Kotomi-chan". Clannad Tomoya meets her, but does not remember that they were once good friends, when he enters the library and finds Kotomi sitting on the floor barefoot, reading books with scissors in her hand, and acts oddly with Tomoya. After several meetings with Kotomi, Tomoya starts skipping the fourth period to spend time with Kotomi in the library. Kotomi soon decides to join the drama club. Just when Kotomi starts to open up to everyone, a bus accident causes her to breakdown in front of everyone and returns home. Tomoya visits her in her house and learns that he and Kotomi were childhood friends, but lost contact with each other after Kotomi's parents died in a plane crash. Not wanting to feel the pain of losing someone important anymore, she asks Tomoya to leave her alone. Wanting to bring Kotomi away from her past, Tomoya decides to renovate her garden, while the drama club members decide to gift her a violin, but was unfortunately destroyed. After renovating Kotomi's garden, Kotomi appears to Tomoya, and after some poignant conversation, Tomoya brings Kotomi out of her house to see the outside world inside her heart. The next day, her guardian presents Kotomi her parents' briefcase that has traveled all the way to Japan, and inside is a teddy bear and a testimony, asking Kotomi to live the way she wants and grow up to be an adult. Kotomi realizes she is still being loved by her parents even after their death and cries. After this, Kotomi becomes more mature, and the Drama Club members finally give Kotomi a violin. ~After Story~ In the anime adaptation of Clannad ~After Story~, Kotomi moves to America to further her studies. She, however, occasionally visits Tomoya and the others. She is very interested in what her parents were studying before they died, which is the theory of parallel worlds. She tells Tomoya, Nagisa, Ryou, Kyou and Youhei about this theory while they visit a pregnant Nagisa. This theory may explain the existence of the Illusionary World. She is last seen driving around in her car, presumably in America or having returned to Japan. Trivia *In the anime, Kotomi is the only one of Tomoya's female friends who actually viewed him as a close friend and not a significant other. *Kotomi's violin gags would seem to contradict her practice with the violin as a child. **This is because she stopped playing for ten years. When she picked up a violin again in high school, she still had the muscle memory of how to hold it, but she was so out of practice that the actual playing sounded horrible. However, in her mind she believed it sounded good because she was listening to what she believed she was playing rather than the actual sounds that everyone else heard. This was actually a part of her mental barrier that kept her living in the past. **In the Visual Novel, she does begin to improve with lots of practice (so much that she injures her hand) and the running gag ends there. *Nagisa is the only person other than Tomoya whom Kotomi felt comfortable speaking to immediately. *The car that Kotomi drives in the epilogue of Clannad:After Story seems to be modelled after a modern Volkswagen Beetle. Gallery Kotomi Violin.png|Kotomi about to play a violin in . Kotomi-After School Rhapsody.png|Kotomi reciting an incantation in the episode . Kotomi-Garden of Memories.png|Kotomi as a child during a flashback in the episode . Kotomi-White Darkness.png|Kotomi after coming back from America. Seen in ~After Story~ episode . References fr:Kotomi Ichinose